Happy Story Time Sunday! Today, I’m delighted to share a flash story called, “A True Definition of Love.” I’m very inspired by art, and I wrote this piece from the artwork you will see mid-story. All feedback is most welcome. Enjoy!

Right after you snapped this shot, I made the decision to grow old. This wasn’t an easy decision for me, as I’d spent thousands of years bathing in the moonlight, holding time suspended in my hand like an hourglass that could be tipped back over with the flick of a wrist.

Frozen in my lavender gauze dress for so long that even the parmesan grated falling snow could not warm my icy skin. This decision comes in the final hours of the full moon. My thoughts like the dead branches of the trees bend in the wind without breaking.

I wonder if that’s what brittle bones will feel like, and if I will sag in the throat or under the eyes. Baggage of the decaying.

Why, might you ask, would I let immortality go after cultivating infinity and harvesting happiness year-after-year, a crop as abundant as the innocent faces of youth?

It was not, as you might imagine, that I had lost heart in the process. The act of squeezing a beating organ from a chest and eating it before it even stops beating.

No, that part still held thrill. To show a person their heart and have them want you to take a bite may be the true definition of love.

No, the reason I am letting go of this power is to feel a different heat. My soul longs to languish in the palace garden grass, experience for the first time in centuries the heat of the day.

I give up my dark longevity for the bright brevity of sunlight. Even though I know dying means possibly facing the unlimited fiery Fluss of hell.

I slip out of the  pale purple negligee I wear each ritual full moon. Diane, Goddess of the hunt, will weep to see her daughter go, but I let the hourglass slip from my hands and fragment on the frosted grass. As the Ancients say, time will now begin to pass.

The stars like snowflakes now have motion in their flights. I will follow them down onto my skin where they will tingle for what feels like the first time.